The People of Nineveh
Of the people of Nineveh we know very little, except that when Jonah is thought to have been written (in the 4th century or even later) the city was a pale shadow of its former glory, but as the last city of the Assyrian empire, destroyed in 612 BCE, its reputation as the scourge of the Middle East lived on.
Gerhards suggests that for Israel Nineveh was a symbol for all the superpowers (Egypt, Babylon, Persia) in their history. Dennis describes it as an icon of everything evil in the ancient world, the terrorists of the Middle East, their armies masters of psychological warfare, and convinced of their own invincibility.
Consider where we find ‘the Ninevites’ popping up in our psyche. Is it how many parts of the Commonwealth still feel about the British Empire? How the USA still feels about the Soviet bloc and vice versa? Or how western Europe feels about Nazism? Nobody is suggesting denying the horror of the past but sometimes it is easy to live with an impression of the past which bears little relation to the present.
The Nineveh of Jonah’s time was very different from the one described here and the extremism of the details makes it clear that we are now in the realm of storyland. In Jonah’s time the city was no more than three square miles, its walls less than eight miles in circumference. There is no evidence that it ever had a king, and a population of 120,000 (4: 11) seems somewhat overstated. Very different from what it was in its 7th century heyday but the ghost from the past still walks and people tremble.
What Jonah failed to appreciate was the gap between their reputation which he had grown up with and the reality (how God saw them). Starting with a picture of a loving God the storyteller wants to present a merciful God challenging popular presuppositions and prejudices. Why? Possibly because in Jonah’s world truth, mercy, understanding and an acceptance of those who were different were hard to come by whereas in God’s world Jonah’s fears and prejudices were of much less significance as issues called for a quite different approach. In fact, not at all unlike today.